


Two Player Mode

by redviolet



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Childhood Trauma, Codependency, Domestic Violence, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Growing Up Together, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, SBURB, Siblings, Touch-Starved, Two Player Mode AU, i'll do jade and john's side of things later but for now have strilonde angst, strider things ya know, the title is pretty self explanatory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 10:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13702767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redviolet/pseuds/redviolet
Summary: “Dave, this is your sister. You two will be living together from now on.”Rose's mother leaves her to be raised with Dave, under the dubious care of Bro. From there, everything about the two siblings and their timeline changes.





	Two Player Mode

**Author's Note:**

> i had a dream about this story, and the imagery was so rad i had to put it into proper words. can't wait to actually get into the SBURB part of things, since hel-lo combined quest planets. also: i haven't actually read homestuck in like three years, so fyi if i fuck up anything pretend it's just part of the AU.
> 
> anyways.
> 
> here we go.

“Dave, this is your sister. You two will be living together from now on.”

Dave is too young to really understand what’s happening when Rose and he meet for the first time. They’re barely five and a half on that day, and all he really knows is that this is a little girl that looks very much like he does.

Rose stares at him through pale bangs, a rich lavender gaze taking in Dave, his Bro, and the apartment around them. Beside her stands a tall woman in a white dress, one hand delicately placed on Rose’s shoulder and a slight sway to her stance in the doorway. The woman hiccups faintly, and gives Rose a pat on the head.

“Smile, darling,” The woman tries to enthuse. “Ambrose will take- very good care of you.” She stumbles almost unnoticeably on the words, but covers it immediately. She takes out a flask from the purse on her arm, unscrewing the cap.

Dave glances up briefly at his Bro- _Ambrose?_ What even _-_ who is as stoic as ever. His Bro makes no confirmation or denial of the woman’s statement, only standing with his arms crossed and lips in a flat line. Dave tries to mimic him, and pretends his glasses aren’t trying to slip down his nose again.

Rose doesn’t smile at any of them. She stands there in Dave’s doorway and looks sullen and upset, but in a way she doesn’t have to actually make a facial expression. Dave is good at reading emotions through blank expressions. Or, he is with anyone who isn’t his Bro. He never knows what Bro is thinking.

Rose’s eyes fall to the floor, where a stray smuppet lays. Her lips quirk downwards.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she says, the first words Dave has heard from her, period.

“It’s for the best, Rosie,” says the woman who brought her. She pats Rose’s head again, mussing her neat white bangs. “It’s for the best, I promise.”

Dave frowns a little, and then erases the expression. He didn’t even get a say in her being here? Where is Rose going to sleep? He didn’t even _know_ he had a sister. This is all going too fast for him, and he looks up at Bro for- something. Clarity, guidance…

His guardian doesn’t even look at Dave. Bro nods almost unperceptively to the woman, and then flashsteps out of sight. Rose startles slightly, eyes going wide, but the woman doesn’t even blink. She just tips the flask into her mouth, and takes a long sip of whatever’s inside it.

“Mommy’s got things to take care of, sweetie,” says the woman, Rose’s mom, her voice slightly hoarse. “You should stay- here. With Dave. You two should get to know each other an- _y_ ways. It’s for the best.”

 _It’s for the best,_ is the last thing she says, and then turns on her tiny heels and glides out into the hallway again. As her mom walks away, Rose doesn’t even look over her shoulder to see the woman go.

They stand there silently, staring at each other with a thick air of uncertainty. Or that’s how Dave feels, suddenly left alone with the sister he didn’t know existed until he was pouring himself a bowl of dry cereal a half hour ago. His Bro hadn’t done more than say, “ _Your sister is coming over. Go put on pants.”_

“She’ll come back,” says Rose, breaking the silence. Her lips are in a firm line, law set. “It’s just for a little while.”

Dave says nothing, since he can’t confirm or deny that idea. He settles for saying, “’kay,” and shuffling over to shut the door Rose’s mom left open. When it click shut, he turns back to Rose. Who is still staring at him.

“…want some cereal?” he offers, like he’s seen kids on TV do. Offer food to guests when they come over, that’s how it goes, right?

“I had breakfast already,” Rose sniffs, and grabs the handle of her bright purple suitcase. It’s nearly taller than her, but she keeps a straight face as she forces it to cooperate. “Where do I sleep?” she asks, hardly politely.

Dave licks his lips. They’ve only got the one bedroom for him, and Bro sleeps in the living room.

“Dunno,” Dave says. “Bro’ll put your stuff somewhere, I guess?”

Rose scowls darkly at him. Dave backs up half a step, unused to someone expressing so much emotion.

“ _Fine,”_ she says icily, and leaves her suitcase by the door. She walks through Dave’s apartment with firm steps, and sits down on the couch with her shoes still on. The TV is already on, like it usually is, and she grabs the remote to start surfing channels.

Dave hovers uncertainly by the door for a moment, before deciding he’ll play it cool. No big deal he’s got a sister he didn’t know about. No big deal she’s living with them now. He’s cool, he’s cool.

Dave slips out of the room, silent as he retreats to his bedroom away from Rose. She doesn’t even notice his speedy exit, using double step to get to his bedroom door in two blinks of the eye. Dave turns the knob with as much quiet as he does when Bro is in a mood- as hard to pinpoint as those are- and closes it behind him just as silently. Then he stops dead, eyes widening behind his overly large shades.

Where his bed used to be, the two mattresses stacked on top of each other, now sits a fully assembled bunkbed. The beds have sheets folded on top of them, waiting for Dave and Rose to set them up themselves.

Dave allows himself a brief expression of frustration, and scowls.

He doesn’t _want_ Rose to sleep in his room, it’s _his room._ And Bro didn’t even ask before he went and changed that. Before he agreed to let Rose be here _at all._

Dave leaves his room again. He doesn’t want to look at the intrusive bedframe any more than he has to. Rose is still on the couch, with her knees drawn up to her chest and a scary glare on her face.

Dave goes and gets on his Bro’s computer, which has better games on it than his. Like Rose has elected to do to him, he chooses to ignore her presence in the room. Sliding headphones over his ears, Dave checks out of the situation.

 

 

 

Rose doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be at home, her _own_ home, and not in the awful sweltering _smelly_ apartment she is now. She’s absolutely incandescent with her mother for this. Rose is so mad she can’t even properly try to pick apart the true motive of this game.

Rose curls tightly on herself, watching daytime television, and definitely doesn’t cry silently in fury and hurt. The boy- _Dave,_ her brother, apparently- sits at the desktop computer, headphones over his ears and ignoring her as he plays around on it. Rose resents him, because clearly he is part of the excuse her mother is using to leave her here.

Rose refuses to make the first move with Dave. That would automatically mean she loses the game. So they sit in silence, each in their respective places, for exactly two hours and thirteen minutes. Rose keeps count, waiting for something to change before she does. Waiting for the universe to budge first.

It does. Quite dramatically so.

Rose startles against her will, at the exact point of two hours and thirteen minutes since her mother left, when two objects suddenly fly through the air to smack Dave and Rose’s heads. Rose cries out, flinging the thing away- only to see it’s one of the many, many brightly colored stuffed creatures in the apartment. Rose stands on the couch cushions, catching her breath as she stares at the thing on the ground. Dave rightens himself in his chair, grimacing ever so slightly as he holds the plush thing in his hand.

Then he pales, mouth turning into a thin line. Wordlessly, he puts down the stuffed thing and pulls off his headphones. He picks up a sword, one of the many, many swords scattered around the apartment. Rose finds the excessive amount of weapons ridiculous; no one could possibly need that many swords.

“You got a strife deck yet?” asks Dave, now clutching both the oversized sword and the plush creature.

“What?” Rose asks back, somewhat thrown by the turn of events.

“Strife deck. A weaponkind?” Dave asks, gesturing with his sword. It’s too big for him to wield right, and though Rose has never seen a sword in real life, she can tell it’s very poor quality. “C’mon. Bro isn’t gonna wait.”

“Wait for _what?”_ Rose asks testily.

Dave points with his sword at the plush Rose threw onto the stained carpet. She notices then that it has a note taped to it.

 _Roof. Now._ it proclaims. She hasn’t the faintest what that’s supposed to mean.

“Strife time,” Dave says solemnly. “You better have a weapon. Or… I guess you could use a sword, if you don’t.”

Rose finally gathers her bearings, and steps primly off the couch. “I have needles, thank you,” she says coldly, and steps over yet another empty takeout container strewn on the floor. Dave doesn’t say anything after that, just walking past her and heading out the door to the hall. Rose stops briefly at her suitcase to pull out her knitting needles and yarn, feeling a little uncomfortable.

Why do they need their strife weapons? Her mother had only just recently started Rose on training with her needles, and those lessons had been few and far between. Perhaps Dave’s ‘Bro’, _Ambrose,_ is going to continue those lessons with her.

Rose doesn’t _want_ to do the lessons. She wants to sit on the couch and sulk and be angry with her mother. But she follows Dave to the staircase anyway, since she wants to say some things to his Bro.

Dave takes her up flights of steps, and Rose’s breathing is a little tight as they finally ascend the last dozen. He kicks open the door at the top, letting a gust of hot Texas air flood the corridor. It blows Rose’s bangs out of her face, and ruffles the pale hair on Dave’s head- eerily similar in shade to Rose’s.

She squints as they come out on the rooftop, the heat even more stifling now that she’s under direct sunlight. Dave doesn’t seem to notice, just throwing the plush toy he’d brought onto the ground with a disturbing squeak and raising his too big sword.

Rose turns in a slow circle, not seeing anyone. Slightly confused, and starting to be more so annoyed, she keeps looking for Dave’s Bro, because she has a few things to say about this situation, and how little she wants to be here with him and the boy she _apparently_ is related to-

Lividly blue eyes are suddenly in front of her, and Rose shrieks and stumbles backwards. Horrid clacking jaws laugh at her, as a _puppet_ dances without strings on the rooftop. Rose has no time to recover before it slaps her, sending her to her knees as she tries to get away from it.

“Jeez, chill,” Dave mutters at her in monotone. “It’s just Lil Cal.”

Rose wildly swipes at the thing, finally getting a needle into her hand and trying to fend it off. The puppet vanishes before she can even glance it, and Rose gets to her feet with shaky movements.

“ _What_ is going on?” she asks, abruptly and thoroughly unnerved. Her right cheek stings, from where the puppet’s gloved wooden hand hit.

“Told you,” Dave says, readjusting his stance. His weird pointy sunglasses shine blackly in the midday sun. “Strife time.”

Rose has other questions, _so_ many questions, but abruptly Dave’s Bro appears ten feet away from them. Holding the creepy puppet, and a sword. Rose feels the sweat on the back of her neck go cold, looking at the blank expression of Bro and the jeering puppet.

The adult looks at them both, his shades hiding his eyes, and Rose can feel him sizing them up. Lil Cal in his hand moves sporadically, still without anyone controlling its limbs.

“Needlekind, huh?” he finally says, turning his head towards Rose. She waits for him to say more, but he doesn’t. Just staring.

Rose, unaccustomed to feeling so, suddenly feels very small indeed under his gaze. She swallows shakily.

“I got them for my birthday,” she manages to say, keeping her voice steady. She feels the small scrape on her knee stinging, from when the puppet sent her falling. Rose squares her shoulders, trying to regain sense of control. “What are we-?”

Bro disappears. Rose cuts off, choking on the words of question as she whirls about, looking for him. Dave’s set expression gets grimmer, and Rose sees him tense all over.

There’s hardly a whistle of warning, and suddenly Bro is there again- slashing his sword at Dave, who parries in a blur of movement. Rose watches with wide eyes as they strife, both of them darting in and out of focus as they spar. Then, goosebumps break out all over her skin as a bone chilling laugh starts up right behind her.

Rose is too slow to stop the attack, fumbling with her needles as Lil Cal slaps her again and again. She cries out as the puppet knocks her backwards, hitting the roof hard and barely managing to get up again before the next attack comes.

Rose’s arms and cheeks sting, catching the worst blows there, and she _finally_ gets her needles in order and strikes back. The puppet dodges, disappearing. A shadow falls over Rose in its place.

She looks up, and barely has time to take in the gleam of black shades before a blade comes down at her.

 

 

 

Dave hisses between his teeth, trying to keep up with Lil Cal’s manipulation around him and failing. He slashes at the puppet, but misses, like always, and is then left alone. He’s confused for a split second- why has his Bro stopped strifing with him?- and then a scream rings out.

He whirls, and sees Rose clutching her hand to her chest. Bro stands over her, Lil Cal on his shoulder, with his sword tipped towards the rooftop.

“Get up,” he tells Rose.

Rose turns her face up towards him, and it’s streaked with tears. Dave sees blood between her fingers, where she’s holding the injured hand tightly to herself. Rose doesn’t say anything, just mutely stifling her cries. Her needlekind lays dropped on the roof, with blood staining a part of the ball of yarn.

Dave allows himself to shrink ever so slightly, eyes drifting away from Rose and her strife weapons.

“ _Why?”_ Rose demands in a wavering voice.

“In this house, we train to get stronger,” Bro says, which is more than he’s said to Dave in the past week. “If you don’t get up and fight, you won’t get stronger. Stand up. I won’t say it again.”

Dave hears Rose sniffle, crying as she gets to her feet. He looks out at the buildings surrounding the apartment complex instead of at her.

“Good. Now pick up your yarn and needles.”

Rose sniffles again.

“No.”

Dave stiffens.

“No?”

“ _No._ I don’t _want to._ It _hurts_ and I don’t want to, I want my _mom-”_

Dave flinches as he hears a loud smack. Rose starts crying again.

“Listen here, kid. You live here now, and rule is you get to talk back when you can land a hit like that on me. Got it?”

Rose sobs wordlessly, and Dave hears scuffling of shoes.

Dave has to look back, just to see what’s happening, and he sees Bro shoving Rose’s needlekind back into her hands. Dave sees her struggle to hold them, a gash on her hand further staining them with blood. Their Bro steps away from Rose, Lil Cal’s eyes and his sunglasses both glinting in the overhead sun. He points his sword at her.

“Now, strife like you mean it,” Bro says to her, no emotion in his voice, like always. Like this is just them playing video games, or picking takeout, and not Rose crying as she fights her first real strife.

“I want my mom,” Rose whimpers.

Bro disappears, and Lil Cal darts at her. Rose screams as the puppet attacks her, and Dave’s focus is ripped away from her as Bro’s shadow flashes in the corner of his eye. Dave raises his sword to parry, swinging the heavy metal upwards to block and divert the attack. The tip still nicks his arm as it goes by, and Dave is forced to flashstep backwards, then dive to the side, and _still_ fails to fully block the next flurry of attacks from his Bro.

His arm burns from the shallow cut, and Dave feels stupid for getting so distracted by Rose. Focus on the fight, focus on proving he’s strong enough to take it. Rose has to learn how to take care of herself, like Bro can, like Dave is trying to learn how to.

He’s knocked over in an abrupt blow to the side, and he wheezes as his skinny chest deflates. Dave recovers fast as he can, but it’s not enough to keep up with the movements of his brother. Somewhere on the edge of his hearing, Rose is yelling.

The strife ends when Dave loses grip on his sword- and is thrown across the roof in the process. He rolls on instinct, saving his exposed arms from most of the damage. He hears Rose cry out a moment later, and then scrambles to avoid her flying body as she joins him on the roof.

Dave is on his feet right away, but Rose lays there and cries. His eyes go to Bro, who holds both their weapons in his hands. Dave waits for the verdict of their performance.

Dave feels shame climb up his throat as his Bro shakes his head, dismissive and disappointed.

“Clean her up,” Bro tells him, and disappears with their weapons. Lil Cal’s laughter lingers as he does, and then it’s just Dave and Rose.

Dave looks down at her, just as Rose is sitting up. Her pleated skirt is smudged with dirt and her legs have as many scrapes as her arms do. Her cheeks are bright red as she sniffles, half sobbing as she curls around her worst injury, the gash across the back of her hand.

Dave stands awkwardly for a moment, uncomfortable with the situation. It’s just a strife, why is she so upset? She and her mom should have been practicing like this too, right? And it’s not even that bad an injury. It doesn’t even need stitches.

“…c’mon,” Dave finally says, holding out a hand. “First aid kit’s in the bathroom.”

Rose looks up at him, eyes red with tears and a bruise blooming around one socket. She sniffles twice more, before taking his hand with her uninjured one and following him off the roof.

Rose keeps crying as they descend the stairs, holding her hurt hand to her chest and getting blood all over the white shirt. Dave feels less and less comfortable holding hands with her, until it gets to the point he pulls way entirely and says, “Stop _crying._ It’s not even that bad, okay? Don’t be a baby about.”

Rose gives him a startled look, hurt in her eyes. Dave glances away, not wanting to see that look.

She hiccups a few times, and shuts up, finally. The rest of the way back to the apartment is journeyed in silence.

Bro has left the first aid kit out for them, with the lid open and the necessary supplies stacked to the side of it. Dave is used to this, since it’s become the normal. Once he learned how to take care of his own minor injuries, his Bro just leaves out the supplies instead of doing the first aid himself. To better teach Dave how to take care of himself.

Rose sits on the toilet lid while Dave cleans her injuries, sniffling now and again but otherwise silent. Dave doesn’t feel like talking either, and just gets his work done quickly as possible. He ignores how Rose’s eyes fill with fresh tears when he starts applying the bandage to her gash, pretending he doesn’t hear her whimpers either.

“It’s not that bad,” he says again. Comforting awkwardly, quiet enough he hopes Bro won’t hear him being soft like that. The eyes of stray smuppets in the bathroom follow him as he works, and Dave keeps silent after he’s said that.

Rose’s eye has swelled slightly by the time they’re done, dark bruising forming on her skin and red vessels in the eye having burst. Dave tells her there are ice packs in the freezer if she wants, and starts tending to his own injuries while she drifts out the bathroom.

When he comes out, Rose isn’t anywhere to be seen, and neither is their Bro. Dave does see however that their weapons have appeared on the kitchen counter. Dave waffles for a minute, and then takes Rose’s needles with him into the bedroom. He’s got swords everywhere, but Rose probably just has these.

Her suitcase is by the bottom bed of their bunk, but Dave doesn’t see her on it. Then there’s a shuffle of stifled movement, and he sees her pale head peek over the lip of the top bunk. She relaxes only slightly when she sees it’s him.

“Um… you forgot these,” he says, and stands on tiptoe to hand them to her. Rose stares at them, not reacting for a beat, and then snatches the weapon up. Dave is somewhat surprised at the speed, but figures it a sign that maybe she’s already learning how things go around here.

Rose disappears back out of sight, and Dave hovers only a moment longer, before moving to a different part of his room to find something to do. His arm hurts a little from the cut, but it’s got a band-aid on it now. It probably won’t even scar.

Dave finds one of his sets of headphones by the computer, and sits down at it for some mindless internet surfing. Rose has had her first official strife, and Bro isn’t exactly proud of how they did. He probably won’t show up again at least until tomorrow. Dave has lots of time to kill.

Rose starts crying quietly again up in her bunk, and Dave turns up his music to drown it out. She’ll get over it, eventually. He did.

That’s the last time he sees her cry. After that, Rose doesn’t cry for anyone. Especially not for Bro.

 

 

 

Rose expects her mother to tire of their game within a week. A week passes, and Rose expects her mother to grow tired of their game within another week. That week passes, too. Rose expects her mother to grow tired of their game within the month.

The month passes. Her mother doesn’t come for her.

Rose has to learn how to cope with that, quickly and efficiently.

Her hand hurts all through the first week, and stings all through the second whenever she aggravates the wound. Rose learns to bite through the pain and keep quiet about it. Unlike her mother, who would fuss over even a bump, the man called Bro and his charge, her brother, have no sympathy for her pain.

Rose learns very quickly two things. One, strifing happens whenever, wherever, no matter what she is doing or feeling. Two, she has to play a different game here than the ones she plays with her mother. Bro’s games are faster, harder, hurt more.

Though Rose has only just been given to him to care for, she receives no special treatment. She, just like Dave, is put through the same tests and trials. She is bombarded just as often with random smuppets and pre-set booby traps, and given no beginner’s chances during strifes.

Bro doesn’t talk to her for three days after the first night, and even then. He only speaks to her once during their latest strife, looking down on her with his blank shades.

“That’s a pretty pathetic display of strifing,” he says tonelessly to her. He shifts his weight ever so slightly, and tilts his sword towards her. Rose freezes up, waiting for the blow.

“Watch me, and the lil man,” Bro says, nodding towards Dave. Rose isn’t allowed time to ask _what_ she’s supposed to watch about them before the strife resumes rapid fire speed.

She realizes dizzily afterwards, flat on her back, that he meant the strange blurring run he and Dave can do.

Rose vows to learn it, if only so she can catch up to Bro and slap him. Payback for the slap he gave her during their first strife.

The first month passes, and Rose walks on tiptoe all through it. Constantly on the lookout for a sudden strife or an accidentally sprung trap. She manages to figure out the basis of the flashstep- the name drawn out of Dave only under duress, Rose pinning him with a glare until he told her. She ends up hurting her ankle on the first semi-successful attempt, and has to learn how to fight with a limp the day following.

Her mother still doesn’t come back, or call, or… anything.

Rose spends many nights staring at the wall, wrapped in thin blankets and uncomfortable in the Texan heat. She moves through a cycle of anger with her mother, then hurt that she’s been left here, and then anger again.

By the end of the second month, she’s numb to both emotions. Emotions aren’t something Dave or Bro use, it seems, and the effect is rubbing off on Rose. They don’t smile, hardly grimace, and never speak in any tone more enthusiastic than flat.

Dave laughs, sometimes. Small and stifled chuckles under his breath, which are then smothered. Rose never hears Bro do more than grunt quietly.

The weeks trek on, and Rose, in all her five year old glory, gets sharper. Wiser. She gets better at dodging attacks, better at pushing her body through trials and pain, and better at stifling her expressions of misery.

She’ll win this game, whatever it is Bro is aiming for with his end goal. Rose hates losing, and hates even more when people look down on her.

She hates Bro. She hates that Dave obviously doesn’t, trying to imitate the man like he is. Rose only imitates them both out of self-preservation.

It’s nearly her birthday before she hears anything about her mother again, and it’s something that leaves Rose breathless and disbelieving. For the first time in months, Rose almost cries.

The heavy hand on her shoulder, leather glove creaking in her ear, offers no comfort as the person at the door drones on. Rose is deaf. Adrift. Confused. Why is this man in an ill-fitting white shirt and ugly tie telling them her mother is dead? That can’t be right. Her mother is coming back for her. Their game isn’t over yet. Rose hasn’t _won._

Rose will learn later, when she’s old enough to understand, that her mother had already given custody of her to Bro a few weeks after she’d left. She learns before that that it had been a car accident, a driver missing the light change that killed her mother.

Rose learns those things, but never learns that the reason her mother left… had been because she couldn’t keep looking into the eyes of her daughter, and know that eventually she’d have to let Rose help destroy the world. Her mother hadn’t been able to stomach loving her any more than she already did, when Roxanne knew, she _knew_ that the end of the world would come someday, and then Rose would have to do things no child should have to. She never learns her mother missed her every day, and wished she had been strong enough to keep Rose by her side, rather than give her to someone who could be more present, be around at all times of the day for her. Someone Roxanne thought could give her the love and care Rose deserved.

Rose learns none of those excuses and promises Roxanne told herself. Because they die with her mother in the accident.

What she does learn, though, is that Dave isn’t as emotionless or ‘cool’ as he tries to be.

The night after she hears of her mother’s passing, Rose is curled up on her bed and staring at the wall. The bedroom has only one light on, a lamp below, and it casts her area of the room into shadows. Rose wants to sink into them and never come out again.

She’s disturbed, though. Rose has become better at sensing other people around her, and knows Dave has entered the room before he even tells her.

“Hey,” he says quietly, from below her bed. “Can I come up?”

Rose hasn’t let him up before. No one has been allowed up except for her, because it’s _her_ space, and _only_ her space, in this small apartment where nothing else is.

But she’s hurting, and alone, and she just wants the hug that Bro didn’t give her.

“Yes,” she whispers, and Dave climbs the short ladder up. He sits on the edge of her bed for pause, and then crawls the rest of the way onto the bed to lie down next to her. Rose keeps staring at the wall for a while, until the eyes on her can’t be ignored any more. She turns over.

Dave has his sunglasses off, possibly for the first time ever around her. They’re hooked onto the neck of his t-shirt, and he’s giving her a cautious look. Like he’s unsure he should be here.

“What?” Rose asks hoarsely, her voice the only thing betraying how miserable she really feels.

“…I’m sorry about your mom,” he whispers to her, small and tentative. He looks like he tries to find something else to say, but just says, “I’m sorry,” again.

Rose feels another swell of painful grief in her, and her control nearly cracks. She stops it before she can cry though, and only allows her eyes to burn as she inhales shakily. Dave watches her, solemn and silent, and Rose notices then that his eyes are a bright red. Bright as the purple of hers.

She’s never seen them before. The fact that they’re siblings has been something neither of them talked about since the first day, avoiding the subject and each other as much as possible, but the strange coloring of his eyes are confirmation. They are in fact related. No one else Rose has ever met has had weird eyes like herself, or her mother, or… Dave.

Then who does that make Bro? Surely not their brother, he’s the same age as her mother, which leaves…

Father.

How odd, the heavy resignation that makes in Rose’s chest.

“…she was yours, too, I think,” Rose whispers to him. Dave’s brows knit, an unidentifiable emotion in his eyes. His face far more expressive without his large shades in place, she thinks.

Rose then feels too tired to think about that possibility anymore, and despite the sweltering temperature of the apartment, she feels cold.

“…can I have a hug?” she asks softly. She hasn’t had one… since before her mother left.

Dave blinks, looking taken by surprise. He remains quiet for a beat longer, mulling it over, and then nods once.

Rose reaches out with the hand that’s scarred, from her first strife with Bro, and steadies herself with his shoulder as she moves closer. She wraps her arms around her brother, feeling desperate for the contact of another human being that isn’t fighting or just fist bumps. Dave is stiff in her arms, and Rose feels something ache in her chest for that.

Then, slowly, he curls his arms around her too.

Rose shuts her eyes tight, and pushes down every tear that wants to come out. She misses her mom so badly she feels like she’s dying, and the hug from Dave is all that keeps her from falling apart. She stifles a very, very quiet whimper, and holds tightly to her brother.

Dave awkwardly pats her back, and lets her stay there as long as she needs to. He makes no comments about Rose’s need for comfort, and doesn’t even try to pull away. If anything, Rose thinks he sinks into the hug with just as much need as she did.

They stay that way for a long while, before Rose forces herself to draw away. She briefly feels Dave resist that, but then he’s letting go and slipping back down to his own bunk. They don’t speak as they separate.

It’s utterly silent in their room, and utterly silent in their apartment, but neither of those things means much. Not with how quiet Bro is.

Maybe he’s giving them a break, while Rose mourns her mother.

Rose is bitterly grateful for the peace, and stares at her wall for a long time. She falls asleep cold and empty feeling, and wakes up just as.

That morning, there’s a new box of frozen toaster waffles in the freezer and a bottle of syrup in the fridge. There’s even whipped cream. Rose suspects this is Bro’s way of saying _Sorry your mom died._

It’s a paltry comfort, and he doesn’t show his face the entire day.

Rose eats the waffles with Dave. The death of her mother changes nothing about her life in the apartment with Bro and Dave, except that now she knows it’s permanent.

**Author's Note:**

> tell me your thoughts if you would?


End file.
